Hearthstone

The Hearthstone is the small stone every character carries from the moment they are created. Using it teleports the character back to the inn where they last set their home, which makes it the most-used travel tool in World of Warcraft and the namesake of Blizzard's card game.

How it works

Every new character starts with an [Hearthstone] in their backpack. Its use effect, Hearthstone, returns the character to their home location after a 10-second cast. The stone binds to its owner and is unique, so a character can only carry one.

At creation, the stone is set to the character's starting area: Northshire Abbey for humans in Elwynn Forest, Valley of Trials in Durotar, and so on. To change it, the player talks to an innkeeper and chooses to make that inn their home. In Classic every inn has one, from Innkeeper Farley at the Lion's Pride Inn in Goldshire to Innkeeper Gryshka in Orgrimmar and Innkeeper Allison at the Gilded Rose in Stormwind. Some outposts use a tent or rest area instead of a building, but the innkeeper works the same way.

If the stone is deleted, any innkeeper will give the character a new one, bound to that innkeeper's inn.

Cooldown and casting

In Classic the Hearthstone has a one-hour cooldown, which keeps running while the character is logged out. The cast can be started in combat, but any damage that lands interrupts it. That rule produced the paladin trick known as the "bubble hearth": a paladin in trouble casts Divine Shield, becomes immune to damage, and then hearths out while monsters or enemy players keep swinging. Patch 3.1.0 later cut the cooldown to 30 minutes, which is how most modern players remember it.

Using it well

Because the stone has one destination and a long cooldown, where a player sets it is a real decision. Common habits in Classic included:

• Binding in a capital city such as Ironforge or Orgrimmar to reach the bank, auction house and trainers quickly.
• Binding at the inn closest to a leveling zone, so quests could be turned in after a trip out into the wilds.
• Hearthing out of a dungeon after a run instead of walking back through the instance and the zone outside it.
• Binding at a remote hub such as Gadgetzan in Tanaris or Everlook in Winterspring when spending days in one area, and using flight paths to get back to the city.

Before patch 3.1.0, groups also used a trick nicknamed "ghetto hearthing" to travel while the stone was on cooldown. Removing a player from a group while they stood inside an instance sent them to their hearth location after a short delay. Patch 3.1.0 changed this so the player went to the nearest graveyard instead.

Lore

In the setting, a hearthstone is a palm-sized stone enchanted to carry its owner back to one particular place. Novels describe them as rare and difficult to make, and only the person a stone is bound to can use it. In the game, adventurers are given them freely as a convenience, but the in-world explanation is that the Alliance and Horde lend them to heroes so they can move quickly to where they are needed.

History

The Hearthstone has been in World of Warcraft since before launch and has changed very little since: patch 3.1.0 halved its cooldown, and later expansions added cosmetic versions from holidays, promotions and the in-game shop that share its cooldown.

The name gained a second life in 2014, when Blizzard released Hearthstone, a free-to-play digital card game set in the Warcraft universe. The game was named after the item and the inn-side atmosphere it evokes, and its menu screen is built around the image of a tavern.

Sources

• Hearthstone on Warcraft Wiki
• Innkeeper on Warcraft Wiki